I do not know how and when the craze for biriyani started. When I think of biriyani, I get so excited and makes my life so beautiful with out even tasting it. I get the feeling of this excitement to make one and see the happy faces enjoying it and myself too :). My amma never made biriyani. She could not digest the fact of mixing gravy with rice and of course the ghee smell that she could not tolerate. Sadly biriyani never came home.

The biriyani that I remember in my early years is the one from Hotel Soft in Kannur next to my college, that I used to visit with my friends. One of the best biriyani spot at that time and their parotta and butter chicken is awesome too.

After my marriage I landed in Vatakara, closer to Calicut, which is know as heart and soul of Malabar food. My husband’s aunt is an awesome cook. She enjoyed cooking and serving. After marriage during salkaram, we had a day with them and got to see her cook biriyani and this is her recipe adapted to what we have where I stay now :). Hope this recipe gives you the hearty feeling that you have while having a malabar dum biriyani.

All amounts as required for your taste. This is a spicy version.

Ingredients

Fish Masala:
• Fish (Tilapia/Salmon/Pomfret/King Fish) – I use fillets of tilapia to avoid bones. 1 packets of Costco fillet. Or around 10- 15 pieces of any above fish.
• Onion – 5 medium ones
• Tomato – 1 medium
• Garlic – 2 bulbs
• ginger – 4 -5 inches of ginger
• green chillies – 20
• cilantro – 1 1/2 bunch
• Mint leaves – 1/2 bunch
• curry leaves – 4 to 5 sprigs
• Garam Masala -(Mix of karuvappatta -2-3inch piece – gramboo–8-9 bayleaves- 4 pieces cardomom- 5 dry roasted and ground)
• 1-2 spoon youghurt
• Oil – Enough to saute.
• Salt as needed
• Chili powder and salt for marinating fish as needed.

For Garnish:
• Onions- 2 onions cut into very thin slices to be fried to golden color
• Cashews – 15- 20 pieces
• Raisins – Around same amount as cashews
• Oil to fry onions
• Saffron – few strands soaked in milk to provide dashes of yellow color to the rice.
• 1/4 cup of milk.
• Ghee – To fry cashews and raisins

Instructions
• Rice and fish masala can be prepped in parallel.

Rice:

• First soak rice for 10-20mins.
• I use rice cooker with 1/2 cup less than the double amount of water. So for 5 cups, 9.5 cups of water.
• Add all the ingredients mentioned under the section for rice and cook it right.
• If in pressure cooker once hot enough, sauté rice with all dry garam masala in cooker in some oil and add the amount of water specified above with salt, lemon and close it but do not put weight.
• Just close the pressure valve with a glass to cover and leave it for 10 minutes in medium flame. After 10 minutes switch off and wait for some time to open and rice should be ready :).

Fish masala:

• Marinate fish with salt, chili powder and turmeric for an hour or 30 minutes will be preferred.
• Shallow fry the fish lightly and keep it aside.
• Sauté the cut onions mentioned for fish.
• Meanwhile crush ginger garlic and green chilies and keep it aside.
• Chop Cilantro and mint leaves and keep it aside.
• Once sautéed well add the crushed ginger garlic green chilly mix and sauté until the raw smell is gone and well blended with the onions.
• (add enough ginger garlic green chili of the mix since when rice and gravy gets together masala should be still strong).
• Once raw smell is gone, add tomato and sauté well.
• Add turmeric powder.
• Let all get mixed well and come to that gravy consistency for the biriyani and tastes good.
• If needed add some hot water to get into a thick gravy.
• If anything looks less like ginger, garlic, green chilli add as you feel.
• Finally add the chopped cilantro, mint and curry leaves and leave for few minutes.
• Add the grounded garam masala and 1 spoon yoghurt and mix it and switch of the stove.

Prep garnish:
• Fry onion in oil for garnish to golden color.
• Fry cashews and raisins in ghee.
• Once it is already get the biriyani pot or aluminum tray for layering.

Layering and dum process:

• Add a layer of cooked rice.
• On top of that layer sprinkle fried onions and a little bit of fried cashews and raisins.
• Place the rest of the fried fish evenly and spread the gravy evenly on top of it.
• Layer the rest of the rice and sprinkle the saffron mixed milk to provide dashes of yellow color to the rice.
• Sprinkle fried onions and fried cashews and raisins evenly on the layer. If you have more than one layer repeat this process.
• If you have oven cover with aluminum foil tightly and bake for 30 minutes at 300 degree Fahrenheit.
• If no oven no worries, we can prepare in our pressure cooker or many prefer cooking straight on the stove in a pot too.
  We can get the dum effect on top of the stove by keeping a cast iron pan and heat well. Place the biriyani pot on top of that seal the lid with the chapathi dough. If we can get some hot charcoal place it above the lid.

After 30 minutes your yummy biriyani is ready for you to gorge in. Try it with mint chutney, beet root pickle, dates pickle or lemon pickle and a pappadam 🙂

ENJOY 🙂 to your fullest.